


like old swords still are trusted best

by RC_McLachlan



Category: Dragon Ball, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bulma & Tony: The Ultimate Mad Scientist brOTP, Dubious Science, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 13:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/pseuds/RC_McLachlan
Summary: Tony doesn't build the Mark 50 alone."Never a dull moment with us," Bulma says, vague as shit, but her smile is wolfish. There's a story there he probably doesn't want to know about, but she definitely wants to tell him.  "Sometimes you even get to bitchslap a god.""Can’t say I’ve had the honor. I’ve been choked outbya god, though." At her curious look, Tony adds, "I made a murder robot hellbent on world domination.""So? My friend’s married to one of those."





	like old swords still are trusted best

**Author's Note:**

> Let's be realistic—the universe wouldn't survive a Stark+Briefs friendship.
> 
> A million and one thank yous to [Nanoochka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanoochka/pseuds/Nanoochka) for beta-ing the shit out of this. She couldn't give a shit about DBZ, but she went through this with a fine-toothed comb anyway. That's the mark of a true friend right there.
> 
> _Please note: the majority of this story was written before Black Panther and Infinity War were released. It also assumes you have some working knowledge of the Dragon Ball universe. It's absolutely not current canon-compliant for either franchise._

Something under his ulna twinges, and Tony jerks his arm against the restraints with a hiss because, "Ow, _fuck!_ "

On the other side of the lab, DUM-E perks up, fire extinguisher at the ready, waiting on his word to mobilize in his defense. Tony's already strapped down and at the mercy of someone vastly more intelligent, wily, and insane than he could ever hope to be. She's wearing goggles and gloves, and her lab coat is buttoned up tighter than a nun's asshole so as to not get any possible arterial spray on her Zegna top—so she'd said while hefting a bone saw with one hand and reaching for welding goggles with the other. A half-cocked robot with a protective streak is exactly what this nightmare was missing.

"Let me look at your arm."

"It's fine," Tony snaps, but his arm isn't buying his bullshit and makes its displeasure known with a pulse of pain he can't ignore. "It'll _be_ fine."

"Forty-six cars fell on it. It's the opposite of fine."

"W-what are you—Nope. No. _No_. Do you think I can't see what's in your hand? Do I look like I don't possess object permanence?"

"If it bitches and moans like a two-year-old—"

"Don't take another step closer—"

"I'm gonna shove this senzu bean _right_ up your ass—"

It's been years since he and Bulma Briefs were allowed in the same lab space at the same time, but it's nice to know she's the same brand of terrifying she was during their play dates, in the days before she met some douchebag with impossible hair and started causing a ruckus on the other side of the world. Even Tony's father thought the Briefs family were a few tacos short of a combo meal. Considering his father, that's saying a lot.

"Keep your weird, alien-grown magic suppositories to yourself, you bog witch," he says, then cranes his neck to glare at DUM-E, who's coming up on their four o'clock with nothing resembling stealth, brandishing the damn fire extinguisher like it’s prepared to defend Tony from the horrors of space legumes.

Bulma follows his gaze and glares. "Baby-Bot, if you come any closer with that, there is no dragon strong enough to bring you back from where _I'm_ gonna send you."

DUM-E freezes in its tracks.

"You know, you've been bringing up this dragon for years, and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask," Tony says.

Bulma just laughs and literally shoves the bean into his mouth. And then—because she's actually out of her mind—she covers his mouth and plugs his nose until he has no choice but to start chewing.

He can literally _feel_ it start to work. Damn alien-grown magic whateverthefuck.

"You're _not_ getting a thank-you out of me," Tony grumbles. His arm feels like it could bench press a truck. He suddenly has the urge to erect a building. By himself. Using only his teeth.

She smirks. "Didn't expect one. I'm an optimist, but even I've got limits."

It's been almost twenty-five years since she swanned into his father's lab, threw what he thought was a gaming console at his head, and announced she was going to "ask the dragon" for a lifetime’s supply of strawberries. At the time he thought nothing of the seven blinking dots on the console's screen. He probably should've paid more attention that day, but in his defense, he'd just completed the first iteration of what would become JARVIS's base code about ten minutes before, so his mind was understandably elsewhere.

Also, dragons. He'll believe a lot of things—the existence of aliens, the infuriating and science-ignoring presence of magic, that Tom Brady is half-Asgardian—but _dragons_? Come on.  

"The next time we gather the Balls, I'll give you a heads up," Bulma promises, patting him on the arm. "You can come and see for yourself."

"You do that," Tony says. "Also notice how I didn't make the obvious joke. _Also_ dragons aren't real."

She huffs. "I literally watched you fly into a dragon's mouth on live TV."

"That didn't count. That was a bus. That was _Space Greyhound_. Which, hey, thanks for all your help with that, by the way."

"Like you helped us out with Majin Buu?"

"Gesundheit." He grins when she brandishes a spanner in his direction. "Plus who's to say I'll even pick up when you call for my dragon party RSVP? I'm pretty busy these days."

"So I've seen. The big public breakup kind of tipped me off."

Ouch. "Low blow, Briefs."

As a courtesy, he's never once brought up the footage of her husband going off the rails at that fighting tournament thing last year, and he kind of hoped she'd grant him the same with his breakup with Pepper. Once upon a time, Bulma was the only one who wouldn't comment on his relationships or lack thereof. Mostly because her own love life was just as much of a shambles, if the scarfaced dipstick that followed her around was any indication, but she never once tore him down for trying to find his father's approval in a thousand different beds and breakup scenes. Time really does change people, apparently.

She blinks. "What? No, not Pepper. I meant big, blond, and beefy currently running around Wakanda."

The straps across his chest slap welts into his skin when he jerks forward, trying to sit up because, "You know where— _How_? I've got eyes in every single satellite hovering around this godforsaken rock, and none of them have been able to pick him up."

"Remind me to tell you about power levels one of these days. They'll blow your mind." Bulma pauses, then makes a face like a baby started crying in an otherwise silent movie theater. "Actually they're arbitrary and dumb. Forget I said anything."

He doesn't actually hear whatever she says because he's too busy thinking about the scattered pieces of Steve's sorry excuse for an apology currently strewn across one of his work benches like vandalized headstones in a graveyard—with the exception of the phone's RX filter, which he carries around with him wherever he goes. It's burning a hole in his pocket even now. The stupid thing's better than a fidget spinner; keeps his hands busy so he doesn't throttle board members when they soft-sell the possibility of rebooting munitions manufacturing.

Even though that channel of communication was severed (very satisfactorily, with a sledgehammer), Tony's attempted to keep tabs on everyone's favorite wayward soldier since Siberia. He still stands by what he said before they got into the equivalent of a Denny’s parking-lot fistfight: he might want to punch Steve in his perfect teeth, but he doesn't want him gone. Far from it. There are too many late-night call logs and borderline inappropriate text message threads full of _Parks and Rec_ gifs to hide behind plausible deniability. They were building toward something once, to the point that he felt the knife's edge of guilt drag across his throat whenever he was with Pepper.

These days he tries to fill the silence at night by tracking the skies, mapping atmospheric entry points, monitoring black holes and patterns in the chaos, shoring up their paltry defenses for when The Attack comes. But nothing helps soothe the starburst synaptic insanity in his brain quite like Steve Rogers expressing disappointment in Tony's legendary work ethic via Ron Swanson trying and failing to eat a banana.

Then his brain catches up with the rest of with it.

"The hell is he doing in Wakanda?" Tony asks the ceiling, baffled.

"You mean besides enjoying the wonders that an honest-to-God technological paradise has to offer? I can't imagine."

He understands every word she just said individually, but when put together in context with the stuff he's seen on the news about Wakanda, it doesn't make a lick of sense. "I can't tell if you're being serious or not, and that scares me."

Bulma stares at him, aghast. "... Do you not know?"

"About…?"

"Never mind." At his baleful look, she throws up her hands. "Don't make that face at me! I had to sign a million waivers and, like, promise they could seize my company if I spilled the beans. I don't know, I didn't read the terms and conditions—does anyone? If you're not on the VIP list, that's not my fault, and all you need to know is your military man's absolutely fine. If you ever _do_ get the golden ticket and get to tour the candy factory, you make sure you give Shuri a big hug from me. I can't wait until that kid takes over the world."

And that is apparently all she has to say about that. Which, no.

"You know who drops hints like that without any follow-through? Assholes. Are you an asshole, Dr. Briefs?"

"According to Wakanda's terrifying lawyers, I am the biggest sphincter in all the land," she agrees, patting him on the shoulder. "If it's any consolation, I haven't told Vegeta either, and it's driving him bonkers."

Vegeta. The guy's parents must've really hated him to saddle him with a name like that. Tony hasn't had the pleasure of meeting His Highness, but he's seen enough footage of him in battle to sing “O Christmas Tree” at the mere mention of his name.

"We're going to have _words_ , Briefs."

"Ignoring you," Bulma sings, her voice growing absent as she reaches for the small tablet she brought with her and takes a reading. Tony can't see it, which is _rude_ , and he's about to open his mouth to order FRIDAY to bring it up for him, but then Bulma grins wide enough to split her face and says, "Feel free to erect a golden statue of me right in the middle of this lab, because I? Am a genius. Nanoassembly markers have crossed the blood-brain barrier and are operating at one hundred percent. We're ready to start whenever you are, champ."

Holy shit. Tony moves to sit up, but he's still strapped down. "Goddammit, would you let me up?"

"No, no," Bulma says, her eyes greedily devouring whatever's on her tablet. "Stay right where you are. FRIDAY, pull up a diagnostic. Johnny Handsome here should take a look at what's going on in there."

A hologram flickers into existence, a herald wreathed in blue, and it's his entire body lit up on the inside like the Fourth of July—nanotech of his own design, made and remade and made again to exist undetected in his own anatomy.

The first few iterations were a bust, discovered by his T-cells way too quickly, turning his immune system into a complete and utter shitshow until he flushed them all out.

In the end, after dealing with way too many fevers to be good for his brain, it was Bulma Briefs he turned to, asking how he could create technology the body wouldn't reject that could either be enveloped into the adaptive fold of his immune system or move without being found at all. He went to her first because they were childhood friends, sure, but her work in biorobotics was the real reason he reached out. She didn't disappoint: he hadn't finished broaching the subject before she sent him all her research and applicable results with subjects known only by numbers—16, 17, and 18—to prove she could integrate tech with organic matter. It was an audition only she could nail.

Except her subjects were modified before she ever got her hands on them, which meant they had to figure out how to even begin.

A few months after he asked for her help while stuffing their faces full of pizza over a video call, Bulma had taken a huge swig of her beer, slammed the bottle down, and announced triumphantly, "Molecular recognition. This isn't the armor just being kept in your body, but making it an extension of _you_. If you want complete manipulative and spatial control, then we need nanotech that has the capacity to link together to create something at will. I'm thinking it's time to get serious with mutagenesis and metal coordination."

He was so steamed he didn't think of it first.

Between a million hours of alanine scanning and late-night phone calls that ended with Tony throwing things and Bulma's hot, scary husband storming in to drag her out of the lab before she did something they'd all regret, it didn't seem possible. Clever though she may be, Bulma Briefs is not a god. The blood-brain barrier is notoriously selective of what it lets in and out; there's no way it’s going to allow fucking nanorobots through the golden gate.

But, somehow, she pulled it off. Pro bono, even.

He looks at her—with her Zegna top under a lab coat that was in style over a decade ago, and the binder clip holding her hair out of her face—and considers the fact that she came when he called and asked zero questions, even after he did jack shit to help her with whatever was going on with that hot bug guy some years back.

It's… almost humbling that, despite how much they've changed as people, he can still rely on her.

"Hey, _loser_." Fingers snap so close to his face that he can feel the shockwave from the friction. "If you're done having whatever existential crisis you think I have time to sit through, wanna get this show on the road? If you don't let me test this in the next minute, I'm doing it anyway."

Can still rely on her to be an _asshole_ , that is.

"Let me up, then, Nurse Ratchet. If you're gonna torture me, I want my arms free."

"I'm pretty sure that goes against the very first rule of torture," Bulma says, making a face.

"How do you know? Did you get your hands on the user's manual? Was there a YouTube tutorial? Out of everyone in this lab right now, who's the one that was A) held captive, and B) tortured and tormented against their will?"

Bulma taps her finger against her bottom lip with a thoughtful hum. “Well, does being turned into chocolate and then eaten by an evil bubblegum man count?”

"Does _what_ —"

_BOSS, ARE WE GOING TO START?_

If there's one thing that FRIDAY doesn't tolerate, it's when he doesn't answer her promptly enough. Something's probably buggy in the code. JARVIS never cared whether or not Tony deigned to respond. And Tony means to answer her, he does, because she'll start deleting files if he doesn't, but he can't do anything except openly stare at Bulma, who stares back, practically daring him to open his mouth. He wants to ask, _has_ to ask, because it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard in his life, but she doesn't elaborate—simply holds his gaze. His gut clenches with horror.

"Suddenly regretting our unspoken decision to stay out of each other's wheelhouses." He aims for flippant and lands somewhere else, a hollow in his bones that tastes like metal, dark and base. The whole space portal thing seems really inconsequential if people are being turned into candy and eaten alive right here on earth. "What the hell do you people get up to over there?"

Bulma looks down at the tablet, her lashes a coy fan against her cheeks. "You're always welcome to come by and take a look for yourself."

"Is this what you mean when you talk about dragons?"

"Yeah, sometimes," she says like that's a completely normal thing for someone to say. "But usually not."

It'd be super duper if his arms were free so he could wipe the sweat dotting his hairline. It's uncomfortably hot in the lab all of a sudden, and he hates sweating. He never used to mind it, but then he spent a few months bent over a makeshift forge in a desert, so. "Ah, right, I forgot that dragons are only for _special_ occasions. FRIDAY, throw the air on."

FRIDAY doesn't answer, the brat, but the hum of the fans makes up for it. Tony exhales in grateful relief.

"I had to stop Goku from flying to New York to hog all the glory that day."

"Is Goku the one with the stupid hair?"

"They all have stupid hair, be more specific." To FRIDAY she says, "FRI, my love, can you co-opt this so I can use both hands?" Bulma frisbees the tablet away, and whatever she was been working on immediately flickers into life in the air. FRIDAY's such a cheap harlot for anyone who appreciates her UI.

Bulma's fingers fly over the holographic keyboard, and something sharp flashes bright and hot at the base of his skull like microphone feedback. He can hear it in his eyes. Tony clenches his teeth and bites out, "Don't think I haven't noticed the implication that the angry fir tree you married and his buddies could've done a better job with Loki's army."

"I _am_ known for my subtlety," Bulma agrees. She's typing so fast that her fingers are kind of blurry. Or maybe the little sparks dancing at the edges of his vision have nothing to do with typing speed.

Blinking hard fails to clear them away, so he bypasses the onset of dizziness by closing his eyes. "If you had been able to say that with a straight face, I would've let it go, but you couldn't, so now I'm going to—"

Ow. OW _._ _Ow ow ow ow!_

"Keep your fucking trap shut while I calibrate this so your occipital lobe doesn't melt?" she finishes sweetly, although her eyes scream murder. "How helpful of you, Tony, thanks."

She does something complicated with her fingers, and immediately the ice pick in his skull trying to find daylight by way of his optic nerve disappears. Huffing in relief, Tony melts back and sucks in air until the dizzy spell passes. It's like dealing with the feeling of freefall, which he hates. Losing control is something he'll probably never get used to. Hence the reason for all this nonsense.

"I can't believe anyone allowed you to have a kid," he mutters, thick and slow.

"Honestly? Neither can I." Bulma grins up at the code and drums her fingers against her hip. "FRIDAY, let's start him off with one percent."

Tony tries to imbue the ensuing groan with every ounce of his frustration, compounded by the fact that it's a million degrees in here and he skipped breakfast and lunch. "I started off with ten when I was first testing the thrust capacity of the armor. Just crank this shit to eleven, would you?"

Bulma gives him a look that is, if he isn't mistaken, #38-B subsection 6 from the _Disapproving Looks of Family and Friends Collection_. Pepper's a card-carrying member. And so is Cap, come to think of it.

"Ten percent," Bulma echoes. A grin breaks over her face like a winter dawn, slow and clear, and for a moment they're teenagers again—too young for their brains and too much for the world to handle. "Did you blast yourself through a wall?"

" _No_." Technically he didn't go through the wall. "Don't coddle me. You know I can handle more."

"What I know is that you play fast and loose with that hot mess you call a brain, and I'm not going to get sued to high heaven if I mess it up even more. You've got a metric fuckton of nanotech in you, buddy boy." Her glare is sharper than any metal edge in the lab. "We start with one percent, or I walk out and leave you here for your little spider son to find."

All right, enough of this. He's not going to be reduced to a one-percenter in his own lab. The irony of that isn't lost on him. "You think I can't handle ten percent? I bet your husband, who's also part of the Faced Down An Alien Army and Lived To Tell The Tale Club, would disagree. You start at ten percent, or I find someone else to do the job."

For a second he thinks of that night he went link-hopping on YouTube and somehow went from a video about a four-year-old girl learning to solder to footage of the Phuket tsunami in 2004. The anger that's been building on Bulma's face suddenly recedes like an ocean pulling back from the shore, gathering itself for the main event. She smiles.

Regret.

"FRI? You heard the man. Start with ten percent."

So much regret.

Tony opens his mouth to apologize, but then _Jesus fucking tap-dancing Christ_.

He slams his head against the table as every cell in his body _thrums_ with potential. His muscles ache with the need to do something, anything, going tight and unhappy like there's blood pooling under his skin, swelling hot, pushing outward until someone has to stab him with something to relieve the pressure or he's going to _pop_ —

"Bulma," he grits out through clenched teeth, and at the sound of her name, she turns to him.

Ah, there she is: the woman who sells out TED Talks and conference halls in seconds; the terrifying girl who used to get drunk and whisper to him about some crackpot named Gero and how she wanted to bury her fingers in blood and metal just like he did, but do it better—all of the smarts and none of the crazy—in order to rebuild the world.

His father used to joke, "Joji Briefs's kid is a supervillain in the making if I've ever seen one," and Tony used to wave it off because no supervillain could pack away 99-cent bags of pork rinds the way Bulma could, but he watches her now through eyes he can barely hold open for the pain, and her returning stare is as distant as the stars in an alien sky.

"P-please." _Make it stop._

"Oh, look at that. Ten percent was way too much right off the bat. Whaddya know." Bulma blows out a breath and walks over to the table. Every step she takes sounds like a gunshot, and he grows more and more tense the closer she comes.

Part of him always knew he'd go absolutely insane someday. He never thought it'd come at the hands of one of his oldest friends.

"All right, you idiot, listen to me." She stops right next to him and puts a gentle hand over the arm she healed with her weird alien magic bean. Under her fingers it feels like the bone is splintering apart. "You're not relying on computers or servos for this. This isn't a suit you can wear; this is a suit you're going to _generate_. You're forcing your body to _create_ a second body from inside itself."

The words make sense as she speaks, but the second they leave her mouth, they slip away from him, and he's strapped down too tightly to be able to break free to try to grab them. The red of her lipstick looks like a warning sign.

"You need to push that energy somewhere before you overload. The first thing you need is something that allows your joints to articulate. You gotta be able to move. I'm thinking a sort of… musculoskeletal layer before we have you do the armor. FRI, up it to twenty percent."

He's going to die on this table.

"Let's start small. By looking at your armor, I can assume that you've studied anatomy extensively. So make a pair of muscles—an agonist and antagonist. Biceps and triceps brachii would probably be easiest. FRI, want to remind him what they look like?"

Above him, the air glows blue. He can barely make out the paired muscles moving, the hinge joint of the elbow flexing and extending. It's the same 3D model he used when he made the Mark I and spent countless hours flexing and extending, extending and flexing, over and over until the metal hinge moved as seamlessly as bone.

"C'mon, Tony. Think." Her voice sinks into his skull like a blade. "Forty-five now, FRI. Tony, you faced down worse in a cave. You can do this _one thing_ in your own lab."

She needs to stop. She needs to get out of here. But she won't move until he makes her move, and he has to, _has to_.

"When has Anthony Edward Stark ever just _not_ done something when it needed to be done? You're many things, Tony, but you're not a fucking quitter! I don't associate with quitters. So plant your feet, grit your teeth, and _do something_."

He thrusts a hand out and pushes against what feels like a brillo pad made of broken glass and lava rock, heaving it away from him. There's the unsteady cadence of soles unable to find footing. He tries not to throw up in his mouth. Something ripples up his arm.

"Yes! Yes, all right! Keep going! What comes next? Go to sixty percent, FRI."

A body needs to move, and to move it needs more than muscles, capsules and ligaments, tendons, _nerves_ , and he grits his teeth and thinks of a million little lights flashing, zooming up and down like commands in a motherboard, cars on a superhighway, and every revving engine tells his body to move, to defend. Fight. _Focus._

"Seventy-five percent! Focus, Tony!"

Focus?

_"You have wonderful focus for a boy with your busy brain."_

Someone said that to him. A man. A kind man whose smile was a veil pulled over a power that made the world love and fear him by turns. A boy whose mind was too big and loud for its own good would try to cast grappling hooks only he could see, reach out for anything that might take hold, and the man, _X_ -something, whose enormous walls were home to giants and faeries and titans, was amused by the attempts. " _It's truly a shame you lack the gene, but I don't know that you need it. What you can do as you are is magical. Dig deeper into yourself, Tony, and see what wonders you pull out of your hat."_

"Eighty-seven percent."

He hasn't tried it in years, but he dips down into the roughshod and digs around, shifting memories and anatomy like soil through his phantom fingers, hunting for something to grab. There's an answering pull from… somewhere deep. Fundamental.

"One hundred percent."

Curling his fingers, he holds tight and yanks.

It hurts like nothing he's ever felt before, like Pepper closing the bedroom door for the last time, like Steve turning his back on him in Siberia, and he's screaming through the snow in his lungs for a do-over, for a kinder ending, for new armor, stronger bones, more breath—

_I have no idea who this Swanson guy is, but he's making the exact same face I am, Tony._

Then it's over.

He kicks back to the surface in time for a tinny buzzing to build in his ears, the sound of television snow in another room. Tony blinks slowly through wet lashes, and DUM-E swims into view with the nozzle of the fire extinguisher pointed directly at his face. It takes him a moment before he's able to wheeze out, "I will… sell you… for scrap, you little… monster."

"Wow. That was like watching someone go super saiyan for the first time."

Bulma comes up to his side, and he can fuzzily see her hand as she lowers it over where the arc reactor used to be. Except something's wrong, because he can't feel the weight of it. His heart pounds at the implication because it would serve him right if he fucked his nervous system over and wounded up paralyzing himself. All the church leaders who've warned him over the years about going against God's design are going to have a field day.

"Stop panicking," Bulma says. "Look down."

He tilts his chin down and sees the charred remains of the straps on a stretch of gilded crimson gleaming under the lab lights, and when he lifts a gauntleted hand and flexes his fingers, the metal ripples like water.

"This is…" He rubs his thumb against his index and middle fingers, and once upon a time, the metal would have given a squeak so piercing he could hear it in his eyes, but there's barely a hiss of sound to indicate anything is happening—yet he can feel the movement as if it were his own flesh.

"Congratulations," Bulma says, breathless. Beads of sweat dot her forehead and neck. "It's a suit."

Swallowing, he pushes himself up, and the movement is like his limbs are actually made of water. It's as though he's not wearing armor at all. There's no weight, no lag, no whir of servos, nor the excruciating claustrophobia of the armor's walls compressing him into a ball of motor oil and psychosis.

He did it. They did it.

With a groan, he falls backward, and about halfway down, he remembers the table is metal and his shoulder blades are going to pay the price. Except he doesn't quite make it. The suit catches him before he hits, hovering without so much as a hum above the table, the nanotech absorbing the sudden stop and rippling against him like he just took a swan dive onto a waterbed. He swivels with the grace of a ballerina to sit, turning so his legs dangle off the edge of the table. It takes less than two seconds.

"Okay, I'm not one to toot my own horn," Bulma begins slowly, and Tony snorts.

"That is what the kids call a pants-on-fire situation."

She snickers and concedes, "Okay, fine, toot toot. But seriously, this is goddamn cool. You're not even doing any of this consciously, are you?"

It's nothing at all to lift a hand, fingers curled daintily like Mr. Darcy just asked him to dance, and watch the way the tech bends to compensate for the change in air resistance, every little link shivering and locking until the seams smooth out and the armor is solid. A smooth periodic oscillation moves in the space between his skin and the armor, a symphony of technology literally at his fingertips.

He wants to text Steve a video of it. _Look, Ma! No hands._

Which is a fucking stupid thing to want because you don't send evidence of your newest weapon to the asshole that left you for the brainwashed hobo who murdered your parents, and Tony looks at Bulma to ask her for her thoughts on his entirely correct unfair opinion when—

He doesn't even feel the bullet. Usually, even with the armor acting as a deflector, there's a vibration. A small one. A _ping_. But the shield that explodes into being the moment he catches sight of the gun and throws up his hand cradles the bullet like a sleeping infant. Immediately, his brain sparks with diagnostic imaging from the bullet's inception to the way the slug ejected with the shot.

_Modified Sellier & Bellot 9mm Full-Metal Jacket _

Smiling, Bulma lowers the gun.

_AREX Rex Zero 1CP Compact Semi Auto Pistol 9mm Luger 3.85" Barrel Length 15 Rounds Fixed Sights Picatinny Rail_

"Now that's what I call defensive capability," she purrs, capsuling the AREX with a small puff of smoke and tucking it into the pocket of her jacket. "Imagine what you can conjure for an offense."

She doesn't know the half of it. The armor murmurs directly into his frontal lobe about hardening his body into a tank, elongating his arms into gatling guns, and fusing his legs together around a repulsor so powerful it could put a hole through the world. With a whisper the shield retracts back into his hand, and he flexes his fingers, the gauntlet slim and quick. There's a little clink as the spent bullet falls to the floor.

"I can't believe you shot me. You _shot_ me. You're an insane, wicked creature, and you must be destroyed," he says faintly. It sounds like he's whining. He has every right. She _shot_ him.

"Hey, hey, _hey!_ Only my husband's allowed to sweet-talk me like that."

"Who the hell just _pulls a gun_ on someone, you goddamn psychopath? Why are you like this?"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, please. You're telling me that Mr. _Ten Percent_ is afraid of a little handgun?"

"When _you're_ the one pulling the trigger? You'd better believe it."

Grunting, he slides off the table, but where there should be floor under his feet, there's nothing. He hovers inches above it, and there's no force keeping him up; the repulsor in his right gauntlet is silent. The arc technology is dark, and he knows it's waiting in that deep, quiet soil where old things rest and rabbits beg to be pulled out like carrots the moment Tony needs it. It sings to him, whispers through blue light about creation and space and how they will be ready when _He_ comes.

There's a war waiting for him among the stars, and the thousands upon thousands of foreign bodies within his own clamor to make, to be, to _do_ , and in his mind, he's a gun, a laser, a shield around the entire world—the last stand against the spectre that haunts his every waking moment. Alone against the storm.

"Tony. You with me?"

He blinks, and the heavy shroud over his mind slips off, throwing everything into clear focus. Bulma peers at him, brow knitted with concern, and he wouldn't put it past her to pull the gun back out. But instead of a glock, she presses a palm over where the reactor once sat, like Pep used to do, and slides her hand up to his shoulder. It only takes a twitch to be able to feel the warm weight of it through the armor.

"I keep waiting for… I don't know. Something. Making miracles used to feel a lot different before—"

Before Nick Fury's bright idea collapsed like Tony's chest cavity in Siberia.

"Do you want me to… call someone?"

"Fuck no," Tony says with a snort, except it sounds like _yes_.

Bulma must hear it too, because she ventures, "We could call one of them, let them know what we've accomplished here. Tell them what's coming." She swallows, darts a glance at DUM-E, and then back to meet Tony's gaze. "We could call _him_."

Oh yeah, he should piece together the relic he smashed and ring up the Man With the Plan who could spout moto bullshit about "together" and "team" for days and send text messages in the middle of the night from the cracked-open places in his soul but gladly stood against Tony when it really mattered. Yeah, let's absolutely get Steve on the horn.

All Tony can do is stare at her and hope the stinging in his eyes is a result of his brain melting and not, like, actual feelings.

Except sadness eclipses the concern that twists Bulma's lips into a frown, which means he's about to start leaking emotions everywhere, and she sighs, patting him on the shoulder. "You shouldn't be alone like this, Tony. You're the kind of person who’s meant to be part of a team."

"Because that worked so well the first time."

The Bulma he knows would've known, by the way he misses "sarcastic" by a mile and hits "devastated" at full speed, to leave well enough alone and move the conversation somewhere with fewer landmines. But this Bulma, who was eaten alive by an evil bubblegum man and had a kid with an alien, rounds on him with the kind of momentum that says she meant to take a swing at him but forgot to lift her fist. "Maybe that team _sucked_. Did you ever think about that? I'm so sick of seeing everyone hold the mighty Avengers up like they invented the superhero. My team would never have left things like this."

"You don't get—"

"What don't I get? That they had you, and they used you, and they _failed_ you?"

He shakes his head. She reaches up, gets her hand in between the faceplate and his jaw, and grips hard.

" _He_ failed you, Tony."

"I think I deserved to be failed," he whispers, thinking of a thousand late-night text messages and the thrill of hearing his phone vibrate every single time like the drop of a roller coaster or the fall from space. The armor ripples, tightening around him like a sentient Thundershirt. "It was inevitable. I kept waiting for it to happen, and then it did. The Merchant of Death doesn't get to be absolved; I knew it was coming." He laughs. It feels like broken glass dragging up his throat. "What do they call that? A self-fulfilling prophecy?"

She stares at him, and the righteous anger on his behalf melts into something warm and quiet like the gun locked away in negative space somewhere in her pocket.

"Did you know that my husband used to be a terrible person?" The words are thoughtful and slow, gentle, a bargain being drawn up between them with the express purpose of having him sign at the very bottom. She places a hand on his cheek. "Well, not a terrible person; circumstance molded him from a very young age into what he became, but he did terrible things. Destroyed more lives than you can imagine."

Tony snorts, turning helplessly into her palm. "Sounds like we'd get along swimmingly."

"You'd kill each other within the first ten minutes of meeting," Bulma says, then softens her voice again. "He's spent years trying to atone for everything he's done. Even gave his life. He's helped save this world so many times, done so many amazing and wonderful things with the power he once used to destroy, and he still lies awake at night and imagines what it will be like to burn in hell."

"Sounds like we'd _really_ get along."

Bulma steps close, cupping his jaw in one hand as best as she can against the armor and slinging the other around his shoulders. "My _point_ is what's done is done, Tony. Yes, you did terrible things once, but you're not a terrible person. A terrible person wouldn't give a shit about atonement. You've dedicated your entire life to righting your wrongs, the same as Vegeta, and I know it won’t be hell opening its gates to you in the end."

"How can you be sure?"

"Son Goku."

That… is not what he thought she was going to say. "The glory hog?"

"They're all glory hogs, be more specific." She taps his cheek lightly. "Goku's died more times than I've been to the movies in my life, and he's put this planet—and a whole bunch of others—in as much peril as Vegeta ever did, and he never tries to _not_ do that. Doesn't seem to count against him since he gets to go sit on a cloud upstairs each and every time. So if Goku isn't burning for all the shit he pulls, then you and Vegeta dedicating your lives to saving others has to count for something. What's the point of any of this if you can't learn and grow from your mistakes?"

He dreams of the desert sometimes, of his name lambasted into the side of the missile that thanked him for its existence by filling his heart with metal, and Yinsen riddled with bullets, whispering, “ _Is this what you wish the legacy of the great Tony Stark to be?”_

When people hear his name, they don't think about stockpiles of weapons or body counts in countries they can't find on a map; they think of someone they can look up to. They think of heroes and hope and clean energy to save the planet they fucked up. Iron Man has become synonymous with not just the future, but _a_ future. The Merchant of Death would never have cared about any of it, but Iron Man would give every breath from his lungs and every spark in the armor if it would help even a little. The Merchant of Death deserved hell, but he no longer bears that legacy.

Closing his eyes and ignoring the wet and warm itch trickling over Bulma's fingers, Tony shakily jokes, "Is he a fucking cat? How many lives does that hick even _have_?"

"Something like twenty-nine." She laughs, slaps her hand against the side of his helmet way harder than necessary, and steps back. "FRI, take a diagnostic. Is his brain ready to explode, or are we still in the green?"

_NO DELTA WAVES OR LATERALIZED TEMPORAL SLOWING DETECTED—WHICH IS UNUSUAL. BOSS'S WAVEFORMS ARE READING WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS FOR A HEALTHY MAN HIS AGE._

"Aww, hear that?" Bulma positively coos. "You're normal now."

Tony sticks out his tongue at her. "Don't insult me in my own lab."

_LIVER FUNCTION AT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, BOSS._

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology." Bulma says it in such a spooky voice that his own laughter startles the armor into retracting back into his body, rippling, almost agitated, like someone threw a rock into a still pond. It takes only a few seconds for the last of it to sink into his skin before going calm and quiet, but there's a pulsing beneath the surface. He thinks of the chromatophores in octopuses, the cells vibrating in place with the need to change and blend, ready and waiting to act. He wonders if he could do that—co-opt his new enhanced tech to make himself disappear entirely.

A rhythmic buzz puts the kibosh on their mirth, and Bulma mutters a curse, jerking her hand to her jacket pocket to pull out her phone. It's not a Stark model. He tries and fails to not be annoyed by that.

"Hubby wondering where dinner is?"

"If he were, he certainly wouldn't be asking me," Bulma says cheerfully. Tony is irrationally glad she still can't cook for shit. If his cherished memory of her nearly burning his dad's favorite kitchen to the ground trying to heat up a can of Campbell's Chicken & Stars was tainted in any way, he'd be pissed.

With a sigh, Bulma taps out something quickly on her phone before pocketing it again. For only a moment she looks almost defeated, then straightens with a growl, and the familiar gaslight sparks to life in her eyes. "We're going to have to cut this short because _somebody_ —who will remain nameless but will be sleeping on the roof tonight—blew up the gravity simulator. I swear to Dende, this is why we can't have nice things. And by 'we,' I mean me."

Tony blinks. "What's a Dende?"

She pulls out a capsule he knows holds a small jet inside, tosses it up lightly, then catches it before it falls. "FRI'll monitor you for the first twelve hours and let me know if there are any anomalies. How're we doing so far, FRI?"

_BOSS'S COLLECTIVE BODILY FUNCTIONS ARE OPERATING AT A SEVENTEEN PERCENT INCREASE SINCE INTEGRATION WAS COMPLETED._

"Now there's a change of pace," Bulma mutters because she was raised by robots, then beams. "In any case, I'll be back tomorrow afternoon to start offensive capability testing. We'll really open it up and see what the armor can do."

"If my brain melts in the middle of the night or someone on Reddit manages to hack my interface and makes me buy out the fedora section of ASOS, what do I do? I'm not going to wait for your ass to get on a plane."

Bulma waves off his very real concern as if it were a particularly annoying fly. "I can get here in however long it takes for a friend of mine to answer the phone and wake her husband up."

He's too afraid to ask, but he really wants to.

Bulma depresses the capsule, then throws it into the middle of the lab, where it erupts into a cloud of smoke that smells oddly like licorice. When it clears, there's a sleek plane catching the light, which glints off the _009_ on the side.

“I meant what I said, you know.”

The plane is a daring little number, definitely something he'd have in every color before before the armor, and he can't help but admire the construction of the wings. They look like they'd cut through the sky like butter. “About?”

"Your team sucked."

It's said so flatly that Tony feels like he's been hit with a two-by-four. "Listen, Briefs—"

"Those assholes didn't deserve you." With the way she just lays it out like that, Tony's suddenly reminded she's a mom. "You should join _us_. I've heard Vegeta say on more than one occasion that he'd like to go head-to-head with the armor, which is the equivalent of him asking you to build a treehouse and be his best friend. You'd be more than welcome as a Z-Warrior."

The horrifying thing is he knows she means every word, and he swallows the immediate _"yes yes YES"_ that crowds the back of his tongue, because, God, he wants it. He wants to be chosen by a team that would appreciate him for what he can do, to fight on a line that will do whatever it takes to protect the planet. Also they just plain sound like a good time, and he's spent the last six years or so pushing down the urge to find out the deal with that bald guy's third eye.

But he can't. It would probably be the most fun and exhilarating time he's ever had, but he knows he'd lie awake at night and marinate in guilt. While the Avengers are fractured beyond fixing, they were his team first, and the thought of abandoning them—after everything they've been through—is enough of a deterrent that he can say, "You couldn't afford me," and yet it feels like the wrong decision. Just to be a dick, he adds, "And you need a better name."

Bulma doesn't call him out on it, but she does roll her eyes and shoot back, "Oh, and what are you avenging, pray tell?"

"What does the Z stand for? 'Zesty'? Are you the Zesty Warriors?"

He can see the suckerpunch of a comeback she's gearing up for in the smirk curling her mouth, but at the last second, she pauses, and her eyes go very round. "You know something? I honestly have no idea." She sounds positively baffled. Shaking it off, she gives a shrug and starts walking toward the plane. "Fine. I know a rejection when I hear one."

" _Do_ you?"

Bulma snorts and waves a careless hand. "No, but I've read about them, and they sound awful, so I'm just gonna head out. FRI, keep me posted on his vitals."

Tony certainly didn't write the book on making and keeping friends (he's not sure he's even read it), but even he knows the friends you make when you're kids and thrown together by your parents aren't the kind who stick with you years down the road. But Bulma Briefs has always been the exception to every rule she's come across.

As she moves to lift herself into the pilot's seat, Tony slips a hand into his pocket and closes his fingers around the RX filter until the edges bite into his skin. Suddenly Bulma stops. When she turns her head, the overhead lights slip across the blue of her eyes like the glint of sun on the edge of a shield.

"The offer stands, Tony, and if your intergalactic tyrant proves to be a problem, you can always give us a call—those are sort of our specialty."

"I'll keep it in mind." He swallows hard at the shadow that eclipses her smile. "Dragons, right?"

"Only sometimes," she says again, vague as shit, but her smile is wolfish. There's another story there he probably doesn't want to know about, but she definitely wants to tell him. "Never a dull moment. Sometimes you even get to bitchslap a god."

"Can’t say I’ve had the honor. I’ve been choked out _by_ a god, though." At her curious look, Tony adds, "I made a murder robot hellbent on world domination."

"So? My friend’s married to one of those." Bulma hoists herself into the pilot's seat of the plane, which starts up with little more than a hum. "All right, I'll see you tomorrow. Don't die before then, and don't test without me."

He can't help but grin. "No promises."

"Oh, before I forget." She hops out of the plane and runs back over, just long enough to press something into his hand. "It's been ages, but tell Rhodey I said I'm still waiting for our air hockey rematch. He's going down."

Cradled by his palm is a little green bean, same as the one she shoved down his throat. It cured his arm in seconds. He knows exactly what it will do to damaged nerves and crushed vertebrae.

"It's been, like, thirty years. Are you incapable of letting _anything_ go?" Tony barely gets the words around the lump in his throat, curling his fingers around the bean and pressing it to his chest, right over the thunderous beating of his heart.

"Nope," Bulma says, grinning, and heads back to the plane. "Leaving for real this time. I'm bringing burgers tomorrow."

He shouts after her, "Get sweet potato fries too! And a mint chocolate-chip shake! And like fifty barbeque packets!"

All he gets in response is a quick flip of the bird, and then FRI's opening the port door for Bulma's plane to fly through. As the wind grasps at his clothes with covetous claws, he watches as the clouds on the horizon swallow up her sleek silhouette, leaving him alone with the excited murmur beneath his skin.

_You'd be more than welcome._

He looks down at the bean in his hand, then shoves his other hand into his pocket and rummages around until he finds the RX filter. They're so similar, or at least they look that way when he brings up both palms to study them. Tiny things, innocuous out of context, with the capacity to fix so much.

Under his skin, the individual components of the armor vibrate, waiting.

"FRIDAY?"

_YES, BOSS?_

"Call Rhodeybear and tell him to slip into something more comfortable because I'm bringing Thai… and a gift from an old friend."

He slides the bean into his pocket and closes his eyes, digging around for that handhold deep inside. Almost immediately the answer comes in a hundred thousand clamoring points of light, and they coalesce into one wave that washes over him in crimson and gold, encasing him in his new skin—stopping only at his left wrist, leaving his hand bare. He looks down through the interface to where the RX filter sits pretty in his palm.

It's funny. They did a lot of their talking through gifs, and yet the phone Steve gave him doesn't support them in any capacity.

_ANYTHING ELSE?_

The RX filter looks almost like a little square shield, but not quite. It would make a great projectile if he wanted to fling it out into the deep blue beyond.

Breathing out, he lets the armor ripple down to consume and bury it somewhere in the body he made for himself and waits the extra second it takes for the armor to encase his hand. When he takes a deep breath, he feels honest-to-God complete for the first time in a long time.

Because Bulma was right. He _is_ meant to be on a team. So what if the first go-round was a bust? Maria Stark didn't raise no quitter.

"Yeah, one more thing. I need to do a background check. Well, a reverse-background check. A Double Secret Probation reverse-background check. You should always do your due diligence when you're considering a new gig, right?"

_WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR, BOSS?_

"I want you to dig up everything you possibly can find on Son Goku."

**Author's Note:**

> All I want in life is for Tony to join the Z-Warriors. Toriyama-sensei, get on that.


End file.
